But don’t we need to upzone land to accommodate our growing population?

A:

We need more houses, but there is already land available for apartments and medium density living.

Te Aro and Newtown in particular have a lot of areas of underutilised land, which could provide housing for large numbers of people.  These brownfields sites have the advantage of being along the infrastructure spine, and close to transport hubs.

It makes sense to develop these sites first.